US forces this morning mounted their most far-reaching move into Baghdad, going into the heart of the Iraqi capital.
Television pictures showed US armoured vehicles pull up alongside Saddam Hussein’s main presidential palace on the banks of the Tigris, and its defenders fleeing.
Soldiers were also filmed in the Baghdad parade ground, which is marked by a ceremonial arch formed from two crossed swords, by Fox News reporters.
More than 60 tanks and 45 Bradley fighting vehicles entered the city on the western side of the Tigris, pushing further into the capital than at any time since the war began on March 20.
Mortar, artillery and machine gun fire were heard in the city. Visibility dropped as a sandstorm and heavy smoke from oil trenches, set alight in an apparent effort to confuse the invading soldiers, clouded the sky.
Reuters correspondent Samia Nakhoul said that Iraqi and US troops were firing at each other in the heart of the city.
“Baghdad is a battle zone now. It’s shaking with the thud of explosions crashing everywhere, between homes in residential areas,” she said.
“People are indoors because shells are crashing over our heads. Artillery is crashing everywhere.”
A US military representative, Captain Frank Thorp, at central command in Qatar, said that the raid was part of a continuing effort to bring down the Iraqi leadership and “not to take ground”.
A Pentagon official said it would be “hyperbole” to call the attack the battle for Baghdad.
“It sends a powerful message to the regime that we can go wherever we want when we want,” the official said.
“It can’t be anything less than extremely alarming to the regime that an American commander is at the presidential palace in Baghdad.”
It is unclear, however, whether US forces will withdraw after the raid, or when it will end. Ceding captured territory would allow Iraq to claim that it had repelled the soldiers in the battle of perceptions between the two sides.
The Iraqi information minister, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, this morning rejected reports that the US had seized key sites in Baghdad. Speaking at an impromptu press conference outside the Palestine Hotel, he said the US forces would continue to be “slaughtered”.
“Their infidels are committing suicide by the hundreds on the gates of Baghdad. Be assured, Baghdad is safe, protected. Iraqis are heroes,” he said, within sight of US tanks on the other side of the river.
Two US Marines were killed and several wounded when an artillery shell landed on the turret of their amphibious assault vehicle as they fought for two bridges in the east of the city.
The river was identified on US military maps as the Nahr Diyala, a tributary of the Tigris.
‘Chemical Ali found dead’
Ali Hassan al-Majid, who earned the grisly sobriquet Chemical Ali for ordering a poison gas attack that killed thousands of Kurds, has been found dead, the Associated Press reported.
Major Andrew Jackson, of the 3rd Battalion Parachute Regiment, said the body was found along with that of his bodyguard and the head of Iraqi intelligence services in Basra.
Al-Majid was a first cousin of President Saddam, who had entrusted him with the defence of southern Iraq against the invading forces.
He had previously led campaigns against the Kurds in the 80s, of which the Halabja poison gas attack was the most notorious, and is linked to a bloody crackdown against the Shias in southern Iraq after the last Gulf war.
He was apparently killed on Saturday when two coalition aircraft used laser-guided munitions to attack his house in Basra.
British hold ‘most’ of Basra
The discovery of Chemical Ali’s body came as British light-armoured infantry – 50 to 75 vehicles and 700 troops – pushed into Basra, believing resistance might fall apart with the city’s leadership gone.
Captain Al Lockwood, a British military representative, said that the army was in control of most of Iraq’s second city, but continued to face some resistance.
He also confirmed that three British soldiers were killed in fighting.
A British army representative named one of the casualties as Fusilier Kelan John Turrington (18) a member of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers. He is the youngest Briton to have died in the conflict.
After a two-week siege, soldiers from the 7th Armoured Brigade, the Desert Rats, pushed through Basra’s outskirts from the south-west in a bid to stamp out resistance from paramilitary forces loyal to President Saddam.
The breakthrough came when a second attack was launched hours later by Royal Marines from 3 Commando Brigade, with support from 59 Independent Commando Squadron, Royal Engineers.
The decision to finally seize control of the city was prompted by intelligence from local people who indicated that many Ba’ath party loyalists had fled.
Troops are now testing their hold of the city after encountering “patchy resistance” from isolated pockets of militia, light fire and rocket-propelled grenades.